


Blood Debts

by BairnSidhe



Series: Worth It 'Verse [2]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Continuation, F/M, Faustian Bargain, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 01:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7385470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of It's Worth It, Remy has to pay the piper, or the External, as the case may be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Debts

**Author's Note:**

> The use of the title External has absolutely nothing to do with the cannon Externals in the comic'verse, and is much more heavily drawn from the Animated Series version of Kandra as seen in the episode X-ternally Yours, although some comic'verse aspects did get in.
> 
> Mama LeGabe (pronounced Leh-Gah-Buh) is an OC based off another thing I wrote years ago.

Remy walked down the shady street, the big trees of the Garden District keeping the late afternoon sun off him.  With his hands in his tan blazer’s pockets and his hair slicked back, he looked fairly at home there, just another man on a stroll.  He wasn’t even wearing his special heavy-tint shades, having swapped them for some low magnification wire rimmed reading glasses at the drugstore by the lot where he parked outside the city proper.  Between the conspicuous loss of his signature leather duster and the plain brown eyes visible behind unobtrusive accountant’s glasses, his own père wouldn’t recognize him, and good thing, too.  Jean Luc had never taken too well to his adopted son turning hero.  And there was still a bounty on his head in this city, from the whole mess with Bella and the Assassin’s Guild.

He whistled a down tempo version of Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler as he approached the house, a renovated shotgun built before the city was American, and owned by someone with enough power to blow him into the last century.  He shook himself and remembered Rogue’s skin sliding against his, her eyes blown with passion and her nails biting into his arms as she came apart in his hands, and tongue, and…stop that you dirty minded swamp rat, the little voice in his head that sounded like Rogue scolded.  He mentally bowed to her and walked up the steps to the porch, and knocked on the door.  It swung away from him soundlessly and he entered.

“Remy Etienne LeBeau, as I live and breathe,” came the breathy southern accented voice from the front parlor.  It was set up in a more upscale version of the tacky voodoo chic common to psychics in Nawlins.  Most of them were cons, in it for the money and lacking in any true powers.  Mama LeGabe was not.  She did swindle some on the side, and to the other side, and at least a bit in the middle, but a true petitioner could get actual contact from other planes of existence with her.  A beautiful and young looking blonde, she was as old as the house at least, a fringe benefit of her contact with the External.

“Why, Mademoiselle, did you doubt Remy’d be back to pay off his debts?”

“I had doubts, Monsieur, dat you’d be _alive_ to pay off your debts.  Not that it would matter to de External, so much.  Reach you anywhere, dat one can.”

“Why doubt?  De terms were very clear.  Remy be many things, bad at readin’ a contract’s not one o' dem.”

“De terms be clear, child, but very hard to fulfill.  A true heart’s love is hard to find in dis world or any other.”

“Ma belle chère is mine.  A man knows dat sort of ting, if’n he ain’t blind and stupid.”

“Ah, my amorous child, dat anyone could see, if you be willing to make de deal you made.  It was _her_ feelings ‘bout _you_ I wondered about.”

“It was worth de risk, Mademoiselle.  Now I come to pay up.”

“Smart man, Monsieur LeBeau.  De External, she do not like to wait.  I’ll call her up for you, have a seat.”

Remy sat in one of the chairs without the bump bars Mama LeGabe used for her sham séances.  It was a low muss low fuss production for her to summon the External, the extra-dimensional being who granted favor for favor, to the long mirror in the corner.  Her skin was the color of the walnut-wood frame on the mirror, and she was naked, save for her violet hair draped over her body, the same glowing hue that wasn’t quite _right_ somehow, that was also lighting her eyes in violet flame.  The whites of them were obsidian black, taunting him.

“My faithful, you call upon me?”

“Great External, one who has begged a favor has come to repay his debts.  Remy Etienne LeBeau.”  Mama LeGabe’s voice dropped the faux Nawlins accent in favor of a more northern, almost English tone.  He’d always wondered where she was really from, and he’d always been too smart to ask.

“Remy Etienne LeBeau, hmm, the power thrower in love with the poison skinned one.  Yes, I have the task.  The weather witch possesses a stolen gem, steal it back.”

“Stormy?  With de white hair and brown skin?  _Her_?”

“I’d abandon any pretense you cannot perform, LeBeau,” advised Mama LeGabe.  “Your professional reputation precedes you.  All the way to her, which is…impressive.  In it’s own way,” she said disdainfully.

“It’s not de stealing, it’s de target.  I know her and I want ta make sure I get all of dis right, so I don’ hurt her accidentally.”

“Yes, the weather witch considers you to be _family_ , so strange, you mortals.  The gem is the color you call ‘red’ when on your plane.  Steal it.  Do not ask, do not pay.  Theft for theft, this is honor, and you will honor your debt or pay in another ‘red’ thing.  I will drink deeply of your life and power should you fail me.”

“I’ll do it.  De contract said favor for favor, but de odds Stormy kept it are low.  If she doesn’t have it, I may have ta ask who does.”

“She still possesses it.  I know.  I know many things Remy Etienne LeBeau.  Things you don’t know, even things your poison love does not yet know.  Ripples, consequences, choices that branch and diverge, but all end the same, a maze that is actually a labyrinth.  One way out.”  A shiver ran down Remy’s spine at those words.  The implications, the dangerous lure of an easy question, with a heavy price on the answer… she was tempting him into giving more.  It was a good bait she chose, but not good enough.  He hadn’t survived this long being a sucker.

“I’ll get de gem.  Den, our business is over, and you give back what you took as insurance.”

“Oh, our business is far from over, Remy Etienne LeBeau.”  She did something with her face that might have been a seductive smirk, if the person doing it knew how human faces worked.  The contortion drove home how not human she really was.

“I said, I’ll get you de gem back, External.”

“And when you come back, you’ll need another favor.  Favor for favor for favor for favor, until the New Sun burns you to ash and I have to find a new toy.  What _is_ that delightful mortal saying?  Oh yes, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.  I look forward to our future partnership, Remy Etienne LeBeau.”

“I’ll never be your toy, Madame.  I owe you a debt, so I’ll pay you, but I’m not yours to keep.”

“You can believe that if you wish, my plaything, but ultimately, that is what you are, a plaything.  You can believe you have ‘free will’ or that you are more than a toy, believe anything you like if it helps you through the night.  It changes nothing.  Oh, and one final thing.  Congratulations, Remy Etienne LeBeau.”

“On what?” he snapped out without thinking.  Damn his fast mouth and all the trouble it bought him when it wrote checks his ass couldn’t cash.

“Oh, I think your poison skinned love should tell you that.  See you soon, toy.”  With a laugh that didn’t quite mesh with the human mind’s idea of mirth, she vanished from the mirror.

“Monsieur LeBeau, I hope you have your answers now.”  Mama LeGabe’s false voice was back.  “Dat little stunt could have cost you.”

“Remy be very aware of dat, Mademoiselle.  Now, just gotta betray my sister.”

“Bonne chance, Monsieur.  You’ll be needin’ it.”

“You know more than Remy do here, Mama LeGabe?”

“Boy, I know plenty more than you.  I’ll not be tellin’ any of it though, so go on and get.”

“And bonne nuit to you, too.”

“What?”  Her voice slipped a little.

“Sun gone down, hope some of your gris gris is real, hear this month’s been a bad one, Dr. Voodoo been working to de bones.  See you later.”  He walked out with a sense of petty satisfaction from seeing her fright.  He hadn’t lied, but a faker in this town who knew enough to know the name of the witch doctor, also ought to know enough to keep real gris gris on hand, and he hadn’t thought she’d have any.  Not with the disdainful way she slipped his home’s sounds around her words like a cheap dress on a cheaper dancer from the seedier alley bars of Bourbon street.  She surely believed enough to conjure an extra-dimensional being and broker deals for them, but not enough to keep her safe from any other kind of dangerous strangeness in the world.

He walked back to the garage where he kept his bike, got on and drove home.  Home to Rogue, home to Stormy, home to a task he would never do if he hadn’t made a deal.  Hell, he thought, I’ll be lucky they let me live, ‘specially Rogue, let alone keep calling it home.  Maybe Henri has the spare room still open.  His mind wandered on the drive, and as he contemplated it, he decided, that one wonderful night was still worth it, all the pain, the heartbreak he saw coming at him like an oncoming train.  But he had kissed her, he had touched her, and lived, and that was worth quite a bit to a man who never thought anyone could love him.  Not after Bella, anyways.  It only worked because she’d truly loved him, even if it was just that night, and he’d hold that thought close in the coming pain.

**Author's Note:**

> Reaction and interaction feed the muse. FEED ME. Sorry, gets out of hand when hungry. Drop a line! Please.
> 
> Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler means 'let the good times roll' and like most New Orleans jazz, can be played up tempo or down tempo, which changes the mood. Down tempo is slow and sad.


End file.
